What matters is the Ct value- Remember this

Can you summarize the Covid Lie for us?

Allen53 wrote:

The Covid Lie will crumble even further within the next week.

Allen53 wrote:

A higher value speaks to lower infectiousness.

Yes, but it doesn't (and can't) 'speak to it', it infers lower infectiousness.

The value cannot speak and the infectiousness cannot hear.

I'll bite ;-)

Allen53 wrote:

What if there were a study showing unequivocally that Ct > 30 aren’t infectious.

Wonderful thing the internet. A week ago, you knew zip about this.

The Covid Lie will crumble even further in the next week

Imagine what you could 'learn' in the next week. Lots of tin foil sites around.

But seriously, for those that really understand, and actually visit these labs.

No amount of cycles can make no RNA show up, what the increased cycles do is as you rightly say, amplify the amount. So if 35 is required, then there is less than if only 20 were required and so forth.

And, I do suspect, as you do that a higher Ct requirement would mean lower infection.....

At the time of testing

That is the point, because that lower number could mean that person is 'no longer infectious' (due to immune activity), but it would not mean (or naturally follow) that they 'were never infectious', due to the time of testing after initial infection.

So, yes... they should be counted, and yes, its even more important to trace their contacts, since the time delay is greater.

The "CT value"? You mean "conspiracy theory" value. 317,000 deaths by December. So much illusion. They are all breathing somewhere.

Coronavirus tests are extremely sensitive. (That could be a problem, experts say.)

September 1, 2020

.....

"We've been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus—that's all," Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, explained. "We're using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making."

But other types of tests can also provide information on how much of the virus a person is carrying, Mandavilli reports. According to Mandavilli, PCR tests look for genetic matter from the new coronavirus using amplification cycles. The fewer cycles needed to detect genetic matter from the virus, the higher a patient's viral load and the more likely that person is contagious, Mandavilli reports.

However, the number of amplification cycles that was needed to detect genetic matter from the virus, which is referred to as the cycle threshold, typically isn't included in test results sent to doctors and patients, Mandavilli reports.

Mina said that information is more telling, as it indicates a patient's viral load, and patients carrying minuscule amounts of the virus may not be contagious. Therefore, information on a patient's viral load should be used to determine the patient's next steps, Mina said.

"It's really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue," he added.

But further complicating the matter, according to some experts, is that many commonly used tests for the novel coronavirus are too sensitive, so they generate positive results when patients are carrying low loads of the virus, Mandavilli reports.

According to Mandavilli, many coronavirus tests have fairly high cycle thresholds, with most set at 40 and some set at 37. That means a number of patients who aren't carrying much of the new coronavirus are still testing positive, even though they may not be contagious, Mandavilli reports.

Mina explained that tests with high cycle thresholds could be detecting genetic fragments of the virus, or pieces of the virus that are leftover from a previous infection that don't pose any current transmission risk.

Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California-Riverside, said she believes any test with a cycle threshold over 35 is too sensitive. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.

And according to Mandavilli, a review conducted by the New York Times of three sets of coronavirus testing data from Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York found that up to 90% of patients in those data sets who tested positive for the coronavirus had very low viral loads.

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said of the Times review's results, "I'm really shocked that it could be that high—the proportion of people with high [cycle threshold] value results." He added, "Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing."

How should testing change, according to the experts?

Morrison said a better threshold would be 30 to 35, while Mina said he'd recommend setting the threshold to 30 or less.

........

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/09/01/covid-tests

yes, just keep posting entire articles and highlighting the whole thing, dipstick.

I imagine you out of breath and sweaty, hovering over a keyboard. Back to work, LRC slave!

The hallmark of the COVID deniers is to take information that clearly says "A" and flip it around by some perverse implication to mean "B". The NYT article addresses the problem of testing as a tool to determine whether someone is contagious or not. The PCR tests are currently just designed to determine whether the virus is present and is simply a plus or minus test. The fact that a high number of cycles are needed for the test does not mean that the positive test result is false. It just means that the test result does not tell you much about whether the test subject is contagious and should isolate or is recovered and no longer contagious, but still has traces of the virus present. High test sensitivity would be beneficial early on in an outbreak when testing is playing catch up to try to determine the extent of an outbreak. At this point when a number of states are coming down off of peaks from the summer outbreak, it is more important to understand who is and is not contagious. The simple solution is to drop the cycles to 30-35 and do a second quick self test within a day of the positive PCR. The quick test is less sensitive and a positive quick test will let you know that the virus is progressing.

What this has nothing to do with is whether the test is accurate. The test is accurate and nothing in the article indicates that the higher number of cycles is yielding false positives. It isn't. But the COVID deniers run with anything they can use to construct their false narrative of COVID 19 being a mild chest cold that just happens to be present in about 200k people who were on the verge of death between March and August of 2020.

I still don't see how something so small (if it even exists) could possibly cause so many symptoms in your body. I suppose if you're a sheeple who believes in fairy tales, you might buy into the hoax, but the rest of us enlightened folk know better!

People can be wrong without being malicious. What I find malicious is the term "covid denier", and, more generally, "X denier", intended as it is to sound like"holocaust denier" and that term's association to anti-semitism and worse.

Things are getting desperate for the corona conjurers! Here they are defending a PCR test the creator of which said shouldn’t be used as a diagnostic tool. Have you ever used a stethoscope to determine if you have cancer?

The revision of deaths is another crumbling piece, 180000 whittled to 9000. That on top of the fact that pneumonia deaths were virtually non existent.

People who allow the television to dictate their thoughts and beliefs are fledgling Nazis

35 cycles is 35 doublings, is 2^35 which is 35 billion times.

and yes, it is a quantitative test that indicates the viral load.

but the viral load changes. One cell may have a viral burst between 500 and 60 000.

People dont understand big numbers.

pupil3142 wrote:

35 cycles is 35 doublings, is 2^35 which is 35 billion times.

and yes, it is a quantitative test that indicates the viral load.

but the viral load changes. One cell may have a viral burst between 500 and 60 000.

People dont understand big numbers.

Your post certainly gives no indication that you are an exception.

united banks of America wrote:

Things are getting desperate for the corona conjurers! Here they are defending a PCR test the creator of which said shouldn’t be used as a diagnostic tool. Have you ever used a stethoscope to determine if you have cancer?

The revision of deaths is another crumbling piece, 180000 whittled to 9000. That on top of the fact that pneumonia deaths were virtually non existent.

People who allow the television to dictate their thoughts and beliefs are fledgling Nazis

180,000 deaths haven't been "whittled to 9000". QAnon falsehoods. You haven't grasped that Covid has killed many with underlying conditions - which is how disease typically takes out the vulnerable. You should be in the White House.

Study just released- PCR tests used in this way for this purpose are, as many of us have been saying for months, complete bullocks- the test is useless not only because it has to magnify the samples to infinite degrees for identification and then ignores the viral load but also because no one knows what it is testing for.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.20167932v3

Armstronglivs wrote:

Allen53 wrote:

Study just released- PCR tests used in this way for this purpose are, as many of us have been saying for months, complete bullocks- the test is useless not only because it has to magnify the samples to infinite degrees for identification and then ignores the viral load but also because no one knows what it is testing for.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.20167932v3

It's quite obvious now. You are a Russian troll.

For citing two of the most esteemed scientists on earth?

You just hate that the truth is coming out don't you.

PCR identifies viral RNA it does not definitively identify live virus (case). First year science students know this. To rely on it alone to determine isolation decisions is a schoolboy error.

Allen53 wrote:

For citing two of the most esteemed scientists on earth?

You just hate that the truth is coming out don't you.

PCR identifies viral RNA it does not definitively identify live virus (case). First year science students know this. To rely on it alone to determine isolation decisions is a schoolboy error.

You still don't get it.

It is, and has always been, quite clear that the higher the Ct required, the less infectious the virus load, to the argument that a Ct requirement >30 means no live viruses.

It does not mean that the person tested hasn't had the virus in infectious state, it most likely means that the immune response has already done its work.

Therefore, it is even more imperative that those positive be reported since they are further in time away from original infectious state and have a greater amount of contacts before identification, and more contact tracing to be done.

It would be ideal if people all presented for testing as soon as they had the slightest symptoms, rather than being picked up later.

Gettit?

Allen53 wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

It's quite obvious now. You are a Russian troll.

For citing two of the most esteemed scientists on earth?

You just hate that the truth is coming out don't you.

PCR identifies viral RNA it does not definitively identify live virus (case). First year science students know this. To rely on it alone to determine isolation decisions is a schoolboy error.

Like you, they are all pushing the line that it is a "hoaxi".

You do know the contradictions in your comment, no? Trying to defend this crap is becoming increasingly difficult. It has become embarrassing lately watching how paper thin such "arguments" as yours have become over the past month.

The idea that a positive PCR rate (especially using 30- 40 cycles) of 0.2% is anything other than background noise is scientifically illiterate. To base policy and limit commerce on this is criminal negligence.

And mass weekly or biweekly testing is being used to close universities and destroy young people’s lives.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Allen53 wrote:

For citing two of the most esteemed scientists on earth?

You just hate that the truth is coming out don't you.

PCR identifies viral RNA it does not definitively identify live virus (case). First year science students know this. To rely on it alone to determine isolation decisions is a schoolboy error.

https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/russia-disinformation-coronavirus.amp.html?amp_js_v=a3&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=15992723679773&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F07%2F28%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Frussia-disinformation-coronavirus.html

Like you, they are all pushing the line that it is a "hoaxi".

I know, I know, Russina disinfo troll stationed in St. Petersburg. Tomorrow it will be QAnon or some other cooked up ad hominem. Just think of the vast resources you are up against.

You operate at a low level.

Allen53 wrote:

You do know the contradictions in your comment, no? Trying to defend this crap is becoming increasingly difficult. It has become embarrassing lately watching how paper thin such "arguments" as yours have become over the past month.

The idea that a positive PCR rate (especially using 30- 40 cycles) of 0.2% is anything other than background noise is scientifically illiterate. To base policy and limit commerce on this is criminal negligence.

And mass weekly or biweekly testing is being used to close universities and destroy young people’s lives.

Since you know so much about the test, please show me the signal to noise ratio. You do not understand how scientific equipment works

The testing of low level live virus is extremely important. Yes, its great to find a recently infected person and isolate them out of community, but even more important to find someone that has been going out and about for over a week, and contacting/isolating those close contacts